Nintendo and Sega had their success in the UK but less so in certain places on the continent. I'm not sure if that was due to price (they could differ wildly from nation to nation) or they just couldn't get a decent foothold in other countries on the continent for other reasons or the people just preferred basic computers.

As much as I loved my consoles and I had my NES at about 4 or 5, I was brought up with Commodore systems from the age of 2 and would fall in love with the Amiga from roughly the age of 13. Those systems always appeared to be the preferred choice to me, my friends and the countless books, magazines dedicated to those platforms.

I've always and probably wrongly sensed a different attitude between us and you folks across the pond. 'Playing Nintendo' wasn't coined as the phrase to refer to general video game playing here as I believe it had in the States, with Nintendo being the preferred choice over Sega. That's most likely due to the marketing machine and many times it's from a movie or TV show where a video game is either in the scene or referred to and 'playing Nintendo' or 'playing Sega' were the terms used for what they were up to. Reality may have been a whole lot diffrrent.

So, I'm a relative scrub when it comes to fighting games. I can hold my own in online randoms, but I'd be bodied in seconds flat in an actual tournament (APPLIED LINGO FTW). So, one of the things I want to do this coming year is to learn how to play on an arcade stick.

I picked up a WWE Brawl Stick on clearance from Mad Catz's website for like $20- I know I'll need to upgrade if I ever develop any real skill, but this gets me started. It arrived today in the mail, and I plugged it in a few hours ago.

I first tried it on Pac-Man Championship Edition DX, thinking the stick would make the tricky sharp turns at higher levels a little easier. It didn't.

So then I load up Skullgirls. I hit training mode, select Ms. Fortune, and then HOLY SHITBALLS FUCK I AM NEVER PLAYING FIGHTING GAMES ON A D-PAD AGAIN.

So, I'm a relative scrub when it comes to fighting games. I can hold my own in online randoms, but I'd be bodied in seconds flat in an actual tournament (APPLIED LINGO FTW). So, one of the things I want to do this coming year is to learn how to play on an arcade stick.

I picked up a WWE Brawl Stick on clearance from Mad Catz's website for like $20- I know I'll need to upgrade if I ever develop any real skill, but this gets me started. It arrived today in the mail, and I plugged it in a few hours ago.

I first tried it on Pac-Man Championship Edition DX, thinking the stick would make the tricky sharp turns at higher levels a little easier. It didn't.

So then I load up Skullgirls. I hit training mode, select Ms. Fortune, and then HOLY SHITBALLS FUCK I AM NEVER PLAYING FIGHTING GAMES ON A D-PAD AGAIN.

I'd say a good thing to do is to hit training mode and do shoryuken/hadoken motions from both directions and the backwards versions from both directions. Everyone at first has some difficulty doing it in some way so getting that out of the way know could save headache later when you lose from not being able to execute properly.

I love my fight-stick but never stuck with it to do any good on it. That being said I will never understand using a dpad if you play fighters on the 360. The analogue sticks, while not near as precise as a fight-stick, are a million times better than the dpad.

PS3 I understand. Doing anything on those shitty sticks in fighting games is a nightmare.

Can't help it. That game makes me giggle like a little kid and the exploration of all the wonderous worlds is awesome. The music is top notch too. The control you have over Mario and the stuff you can make him do is great too. That game is my happy place.

"In 1979, Atari made Asteroids... But, in 1981, Amusement World produced Meteors - a clone of Asteroids. This lead to Amusement World getting sued. When the case went to court, the judge sided with Amusement world. This landmark case ruled that you cannot copyright a genre of game.